About

Car Park (also known as Rush Hour or Parking Lot) is a sliding block puzzle where a target car is trapped in a grid full of other vehicles. The other cars can only slide forward or backward along their orientation (horizontal or vertical). Your goal is to slide vehicles out of the way to create a clear path for the target car to exit.

The challenge increases as the grid fills with vehicles of varying lengths. Moving one car to clear the target's path often requires moving three or four others first, creating chains of dependencies that require planning 5–10 moves ahead.

Car Park is a deeply satisfying spatial logic puzzle. Each session is 5–15 minutes; the "aha" moment when you see the full solution path is reliably rewarding.

How to Play

• Click and drag a vehicle to slide it along its orientation (horizontal cars move left/right; vertical cars move up/down).
• Vehicles cannot pass through each other.
• Move blocking vehicles out of the way to create a clear path for the red car.
• Slide the red car out through the exit on the right side of the grid to win.

Tips

• Identify the direct blockers first, then the blockers of those blockers — work backwards from the exit.
• Vehicles that can move in two directions give you options; prioritize moving those that only unblock in one useful way.
• Don't move vehicles unnecessarily — each extra move may create a new obstacle.

History

Rush Hour was invented by Nob Yoshigahara and published by Binary Arts (now ThinkFun) in 1996. It became one of the best-selling puzzle toys of the late 1990s and has since sold tens of millions of copies. The puzzle belongs to a family of "sliding block" puzzles with origins in the late 19th century. Rush Hour has been used in AI research as a benchmark for planning algorithms.